this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Yeah, now I'm concerned this might happen with Unreal Engine, even though they've given no indication that it will. Once Godot works out the kinks with level and texture streaming, and has a landscape editor I will be going back to Godot.
Proprietary software can never be truly trusted. You are always at their whims.
Unreal is completely open source, you can compile it yourself.
It is source available, under the terms Epic licenses to you. Not Open Source
When did the term "open source" start including specifics about licensing terms? My understanding from the past few decades was that "open source" meant the source was available for people to look at and compile.
Open source has always meant under a free license. Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy.
No, that is an enumerated freedom of the free software movement, not open source
The same article also talks about the difference between open source and source available:
Under that strict definition, software under the GNU GPL would not be "open source" because the license stays with the code, and is not truly "for any purpose," which is the same deal with the Epic license: you may use, study, change, and distribute the Unreal source code, but it stays under Epic's license.
If you are talking about the FREEDOM to fork and publish and share and whatever, then you mean Free software.
You are not allowed to distribute unreal source. From their FAQ:
Unreal Engine licensees are permitted to post engine code snippets (up to 30 lines) in a public forum, but only for the purpose of discussing the content of the snippet
But the code is easily visible and you can compile it yourself. If you say "I only run software I 100% knows what it does because I can read it's source code" then Unreal Engine fits, it's open source.
That's not why people want an open source game engine though, they want it to be open source so that they can't do a unity
I agree the phrase "open source" is a bit confusing
That has nothing to do with open source, that has to to with licensing, which I'm pretty sure isn't an issue anyway since I think Unreal versions are tied to specific license versions, i.e. if you download the engine under one term, thats the only one you have to use
Ideas started in the 70s, Free Software Movement happened in the 80s, the term Open Source from the 90s as an alternative to “free” to be more clear.
It always meant this.
Yes, open source.
You mean free/libre? Open source literally just means you can see the source.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
And then later on...
Unreal Engine is technically open source, because it's source code is made available to the general public. But it is licensed under a restrictive EULA instead of any of the normal licenses you'd expect for an open source project (MIT, Apache, GPL3, etc).
This is definitely pedantic, but "open source" is a colloquial term, not a technical one. Most people mean FOSS when they say open source, but the terms aren't exactly equivalent. The license that governs the code is really the only part that actually matters.
Let's just call it OpenSource+ at this point ;)
Long-term I think corporate tech as we know it is screwed. Their explosive growth from the pandemic making everyone terminally online is drying up as more and more people go back to touching grass, so now the bill’s coming due and it’s only a matter of time now before Unreal also does something stupid we can’t even imagine for a quick buck
People were terminally online well before 2019. It exacerbated the problem but we're not going back. I don't really think that's a problem, technologically it pushed us further ahead which is always a good thing.
You're right in that we are starting to rediscover what it means to be physically social again. I think that's a good thing, too. People that got away with shit before aren't getting away with it any more.
The problem is that interest rates have gone up after being extremely low ever since the 2008 crash, so investors lost their endless supply of debt-fuelled free money. They can't pump money into companies operating at a loss anymore, so suddenly those companies have to find a way to turn a profit.
And some of them realistically can't. Every other commercial game engine is developed for the studio first; Cry, Source, Unreal etc. These engines were made for, well, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament. The studio saw returns for engine development in the sales of games, then they said "We could probably further monetize the work we've already done if we license the engine and SDK out to third parties."
Unity on the other hand is trying to have the Autodesk/Adobe business model of "We have a free student or hobbyist tier, and then a commercial license that's $100,000 per minute per seat." The thing is, Autodesk and Adobe really don't have realistic competitors in their market sectors. Unity very much does. Unity competes directly with GameMaker Studio, Godot, Unreal, Source 2 among others, the development of which are either directly supported by the sales of first party titles (or are outright FOSS projects in the case of Godot). So Unity has to set their prices to compete in that market, without the support of first party game sales.
You can see how that's working out for them.
https://github.com/TokisanGames/Terrain3D
Nice, it's been 6-7 months since I used Godot. Glad they got a terrain editor ported over.
The biggest thing about Epic is that it is NOT a publicly traded company.
It doesn't mean that it's not subject to the "Infinite Growth Disease" but look at their biggest investor: Sony and Tencent.
Both Game companies that SHOULD be more interested in having access to a good game engine than to make every dollar's possible.